CANNES, France - Superstar chef Gordon Ramsay revealed the secret of his success Tuesday, "I am the biggest pain in the ass in the world, because I want the best."

The British cook said he was a stress junkie who needs to master whatever he does, whether in getting seven Michelin stars for his haute cuisine or sorting out failing restaurants in his television show "Hell's Kitchen".

"I need to be at the coalface, I need to be where the heartbeat is, where there is that level of trepidation," he told the MIPCOM television industry gathering at Cannes on the French Riviera.

"I need to be under pressure because pressure is healthy," said the chef, who is so famous for his use of the four-letter epithet that one of his shows was called "The F Word".

Ramsay, who once aspired to be a professional footballer, has become a global broadcasting phenomenon with his shows like "Kitchen Nightmares" and "MasterChef" hogging 2,000 hours of screen time in the US alone last year.

Ramsay said he never dreamed that he would end up on TV when he first came to Cannes 25 years ago as the cook on Australian media mogul Reg Grundy's yacht.

The man behind such shows as "Wheel of Fortune" and "Neighbors" tried to encourage the then 25-year-old "spotty and anemic chef" to try presenting.

"But I wanted to strive for three Michelin stars. The foundations had to be set absorbing from the very best French chefs to understand that level of haute cuisine. For me the challenge has always been to bring things to their absolute best," he said. - AFP